|
|
| Author |
Message |
mary
|
|
Co-location
| 
Jul 21 16:27 UTC 2003 |
From time to time the subject of Grex residing at a
co-location facility has come up. What usually follows is
a flurry of opinions but never, that I know of, a
serious attempt to get numbers and facts.
I'd like us to get those numbers and find out more
about how it works and what's available in our area.
This is just early discussion and fact-finding.
Please don't get feathers ruffled. Our current
lease, and insurance coverage, runs until June 1, 2004.
|
| 184 responses total. |
mary
|
|
response 1 of 184:
|
Jul 21 16:37 UTC 2003 |
I'd heard about this company from some techies at work.
http://onlinetech.net/index.cfm?pageSRC=Connectivity
I called 'em up and explained, briefly, what Grex is
about and of our needs and our shoestring budget.
Here is what my notes show:
1. Phone lines available for dialup access: Yes
2. 24 hour access to a locked cage
3. Located on the north side of Ann Arbor, near Plymouth & Green
4. Air conditioned with backup air conditioning
5. Electricity is included in the monthly rate
6. No insurance needed - they carry the insurance
7. A .0125 mbps connection which can be increased
8. Site power conditioning and backup
9. ~ $188 per month
Anyone else know about them?
Mark, when you add up our insurance, bandwith, rent and
electricity, what is it running us a month?
Anyhow, I don't know the techie end of things but I
thought this sounded like something we should discuss.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 2 of 184:
|
Jul 21 17:47 UTC 2003 |
It is something we should discuss, Mary. Thank you for coming with some
pricing from a local provider. :)
|
tod
|
|
response 3 of 184:
|
Jul 21 17:58 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 4 of 184:
|
Jul 21 19:40 UTC 2003 |
Not so weird, and even less weird in the near future. But yeah, 24x7 access
has been one of the sticking points.
|
aruba
|
|
response 5 of 184:
|
Jul 22 01:57 UTC 2003 |
Currently our expenses are:
80.41 Rent
45.97 Electricity
135.00 DSL
39.58 Liability insurance
------
300.96
|
i
|
|
response 6 of 184:
|
Jul 22 02:03 UTC 2003 |
If that's really 0.0125 megabit per second connection speed...well, that's
less than half the speed of a 28.8 modem (0.0288 mbps). We should look at
a 0.5000 mbps or so connection.
Are there any bandwidth fees?
Whether we want to keep the dial-in lines could be debated...
|
janc
|
|
response 7 of 184:
|
Jul 22 03:54 UTC 2003 |
Cool.
|
davel
|
|
response 8 of 184:
|
Jul 22 15:22 UTC 2003 |
There are still some people who only have dialup access. My family is among
them.
(I personally can get on through work.)
|
keesan
|
|
response 9 of 184:
|
Jul 22 17:07 UTC 2003 |
You would lose at least four grex users (including two paying members) if you
cut the dialin lines. No way am I going to telnet to grex except in
emergencies. Everything takes twice as long, and sometimes I sit there for
30 seconds with nothing happening.
|
mary
|
|
response 10 of 184:
|
Jul 22 17:35 UTC 2003 |
Yep, there are folks who can only get in by dialup access.
Keeping Grex available to them is part of Grex's mission,
in my opinion.
I called to get the bandwidth issue clarified.
Included in the $188 a month is a 0.125 mbps connection.
We can increase that in 0.125 increments at $30 each.
So for $278 a month we'd be getting 0.5 mbps.
At some point it's going to be helpful to have one
of our techies start speaking with this gentleman
as he is clearly quite proud of the service he offers
but it's way over my head. I think he said he's been
with the company since 1995, don't know if that's also
when the business opened.
One of the aspects of this that thrills me no end is
how we wouldn't need insurance. That has been an issue
in the past and it's only going to get worse, and more
costly. I'd much rather put our money into bandwidth
than Hastings Mutual.
|
jep
|
|
response 11 of 184:
|
Jul 22 19:00 UTC 2003 |
I don't have those kinds of problems, Sindi. I believe I get faster
access via telnet than I ever got with a modem.
Also, with a co-locate we would probably expect to have a faster
connection than we have now. With the NextGrex hardware, I expect
we'll see *much* faster response times with *everything*. Except
modems.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 12 of 184:
|
Jul 22 19:39 UTC 2003 |
I don't think the insurance issue is quite as clear as he suggests. I can
see them carrying insurance to protect our equipment from their problems,
I _don't_ see them carrying insurance to protect themselves from us.
Just as a rental owner will have insurance to protect the television from
the roof going bad, but the renter has to carry insurance to protect the
roof from the television going bad. However, if their insurance _does_
protect them from us, and us from us, and us from them, it would be a
good deal.
According to their web site, Online Technologies Coroporation was
established in 1994. So it sounds like your contact has been with them
almost from the beginning, Mary.
|
mary
|
|
response 13 of 184:
|
Jul 22 20:23 UTC 2003 |
We talked some about the insurance and I explained how we needed to carry
liablity coverage under our current lease. He clearly said that wasn't
necessary with co-lo.
And I must not have been clear - I contacted this company for the first
time yesterday. I asked the person I was speaking to if it was his
company (mostly is) and how long he'd been there. I wanted to get a feel
if this was an established business or a new venture. Hence the
1995 comment.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 14 of 184:
|
Jul 22 20:39 UTC 2003 |
Thanks for the clarifications, Mary.
|
keesan
|
|
response 15 of 184:
|
Jul 22 20:40 UTC 2003 |
Jep, you have a DSL line. I dial in at 28.8 (my 33K modem suddenly started
to connect at 26400).
|
janc
|
|
response 16 of 184:
|
Jul 22 20:53 UTC 2003 |
Mary said we WOULD be able to have dialins at this location. I think in that
location we can even keep the same phone number.
How big a cage is this? Grex will be switching over to the new machine, which
is a standard full tower - not too big. However, we run more than one
computer. Gryps is a mini-tower, I think. We would quite probably want to
keep old-grex around for a while. It's huge.
What's the power like? Do they do UPS / backup generators or is all power
conditioning up to us?
Actually, it'd be nice for a deligation to visit the place. Talk to people
face to face, see what it all looks like.
This would require getting rid of a lot of junk stashed in the pumpkin now.
I consider this a pure win though.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 17 of 184:
|
Jul 22 21:09 UTC 2003 |
A visit would be a good idea. Their web site doesn't answer your specific
questions, Jan, but it does offer hope for the right answers. For one thing,
they are in the same building as an Ameritech Data Center. They advertise
"Environmental Controls" but not with specifics.
|
mary
|
|
response 18 of 184:
|
Jul 22 21:31 UTC 2003 |
The 24/7 locked cage thing is on the horizon but not
immediately available. He's setting it up now and it
sounded like weeks rather than months, long before we'd
be needing it.
This location is really big time into minimizing downtime.
It's my understanding they have backup power as part of
their service. I would assume that includes power conditioning.
But really, someone from staff should collect some questions
and give him a call.
The price he quoted was for *a* rack. Bring more and
I suspect the price goes up. But I'm not the person
to talk about our hardware. I more into narcotics. ;-)
|
cmcgee
|
|
response 19 of 184:
|
Jul 23 00:20 UTC 2003 |
Keep the dial-ins. Some of us need them.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 20 of 184:
|
Jul 23 00:33 UTC 2003 |
A rack should be more than enough space for anything we could want to put
in the site. The tower will fit on one shelf, the Sun will fit on another
shelf (the bottom one, were it me), with the SCSI disk enclosure on another
shelf, perhaps between the tower and the Sun. Actually, two towers can
be put side-by-side on one shelf, but it should be a reinforced shelf,
to prevent it bowing and leaning the two machines against one another.
And there's still room above that for another shelf or two.
If the Sun is gone by then, that means just that much more room for the
stuff we are using.
|
scott
|
|
response 21 of 184:
|
Jul 23 01:04 UTC 2003 |
Nobody is arguing that we ditch the dialin lines.
|
cmcgee
|
|
response 22 of 184:
|
Jul 23 01:39 UTC 2003 |
see resp 8 here and richard in Agora.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 23 of 184:
|
Jul 23 01:55 UTC 2003 |
Right; someone suggested it, and others think it would be a good idea. We've
seen others say that it is NOT a good idea, given grex's overall mission.
I, too, think it is premature, to say the least, to consider turning off the
modems.
|
mary
|
|
response 24 of 184:
|
Jul 23 02:02 UTC 2003 |
I got an answer on the insurance issue - there isn't one. We don't have
to carry liability and I asked about whether our equipment was covered in
the event their building had a fire. He said their insurance would cover
our loss. I assume there is some fine print in there somewhere,
there always is, but so far I like the answers.
Too, regarding power, the facility has a backup power generator, redundant
air conditioning units, UPS power and filtration with battery backup, and
redundant connectivity.
One thing I don't understand is the bandwidth. We would contract for a
specific amount and be able to increase that whenever. But if we have a
bandwidth "overage" we get billed at a slightly higher rate. So staying
within a bandwidth limit is our responsibility? It isn't, say, metered
with an upper limit cutoff? Does this make sense to anyone?
|
